Recently I advised someone I'll call Monica, who was doing an adoption search for her elderly mother and was feeling frustrated with traditional genealogy, to do the paper-trail genealogy anyway because even if a DNA database offered some matches, she and the other party were still going to have to figure out the relationships. Taking a DNA test doesn't mean you won't need to do the genealogy.
Basically, and perhaps simplistically, because scientists are working on it but do not know for sure how all our DNA is moved along each generation and know there are mutations and changes, it goes like this: We have two parents (each giving us 50% of our genetics), four grandparents (each giving us 25% of our genetics), eight great grandparents (each giving us 12.5%...) We also share percentages with cousins, second cousins, and so on
Monica is only 1/4th genetically related to her unknown grandparents on her mother's side who are very likely not alive to do any DNA testing. And she says she is only getting into this because her mother doesn't want to die not knowing who her people are. Monica herself says she knows who her parents are and isn't interested in being tested.
People get really confused by their test results when it comes to how related they are to someone else. The measurement of relatedness is called a CENTIMORGAN and is defined as how much you're related, not just by percentage but by which strand of DNA you and another person share. The higher the shared centimorgan, the closer the genetic relationship. But when it comes to a database match, you could share that 12.5 percent with a cousin who is alive and tested rather than a great grandparent who is long ago deceased.
Monica's mother, in her 80's now, can submit her DNA for testing through one or more companies and approve that she wants to be informed if there are any matches. To find her parents, just using a DNA test and database, a full or half sibling, likely in Europe, must also test, and then tell her who they are. Full or half siblings may not know they have a full or half sibling in America. A question she should ask the various DNA companies is if they have a comprehensive database full of customers in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary.
Other persons Monica's mother is genetically related to will have to also pick the same company and give this approval. Then they will both be told via e-mail what the relationship is via percentages of relatedness, which usually translate to sibling, cousin, etc. She and/her mom are not going to get a message that says "your mother was _________, your father was ____________," and provide a genealogy chart. No, at that point she and the other person will need to share knowledge and research.
Since Monica is an only child, she would not get any sibling matches if she did test. She might get some cousin matches, or second or third cousin matches. However, the best case scenario for her mother is a sibling match. Though in her 80's, if her parents went back to Europe and had more children, there could be people in their 60's alive there who are her siblings. It's worth a try.
But let's look at the cousin thing.
From my own research, I would say that I'm likely related to a huge number of people whose ancestry comes from a certain town in Europe, people who lived there in the 1800's. Why? While my own chart reflects the straight lines of parent to grandparents and so on, I have very many family group sheets too. Two binders worth. If I include my grandparent's parents siblings and half siblings, and their parent's siblings, I can connect genetically with dozens of surnames in the 1880's, perhaps every surname in the town. I might even share genetics in some way with thousand of people by following back and forward to a great great grandfather's siblings, ten of them, who they married, and their children, who were marrying in another town in the early 1800's. However, if I took the DNA test I would only be united with those who also took the DNA test for the same company. Even with all the charts I've made, I might have to make new charts to find the way we link. In my case when it comes to learning about people who lived before the records available for those towns, I would have to link up with someone who is the keeper of the family archive. Rumors and stories are interesting but no archival documents means it's not genealogy. My best hope when it comes to records going back past about 1800 there would be if the family was nobility. Then the family records might be held in an actual archive.
I have concerns for Monica and her mom - who could have started this quest years ago by using Adoption Registries - even before there was DNA testing - for other reasons.
Because all that her mother was told or remembers is considered "known facts" when there is no proof, it might be that genealogy myopia is wrongly focusing the research. There is no original birth certificate, which even then might not be 100% true, since some birth mothers lied about not knowing who the father was or gave a fake name or gave the name of an ex husband, such as in the case of Marilyn Monroe, where does this leave her? The search is for the truth, right? Yet rarely is it "just the facts." However. as this is all she has to go on, Monica is focused on Chicago.
In looking at some adoption records available through FamilySearch for Chicago I noted that while sometimes both parents were named, often just the mother was named. Implied is that the babies were born in Chicago, I noted that marital status was not mentioned. That what is available there is not very useful.
The story goes that her mother's parents "went back" to a European country after leaving her mother for adoption in Chicago. This was between World War I and World War II and during the Great Depression. Two surnames came forth with an oral history somewhere along the line but while one may check out because it's fairly common, the other seems to not be spelled or pronounced right. It would probably be spinning the wheels to look at immigration records for the common surname just to see if there was some trend of immigration, some town or country consistently mentioned for the common name.
As for the surname that seems false, there are rare surnames but frankly with so much on the Internet, if you put in a search in Google for that name, and it is not coming up any which way and no suggestions are coming up either, well, maybe it's never been a surname. I tried some variations and maybe if we knew for sure what the ethnicity was, we might be able to find someone native in that language and see what they know. We might be able to find surname lists and see if there is any name that is close.The Soundex used on Slavic names is German and that's not a match, sorry. Wish there were a Soundex for Slavic names!
My feeling is that this would be putting the cart before the horse.
The story went that in the late 1930's this immigrant couple had this child and gave it up before returning to their home country. It happened, but there is no proof they were married. It's not certain then that they were immigrants who were simply too impoverished or ill to make it in America... There's no proof they were immigrants. There's no proof they went back anywhere.
Any situation could have been the reality. The woman could have been raped. She could have had an affair. They could have had very many children already. (I once met a man whose parents had 13 children.They kept the first ten and adopted out the last three, he being one of them.) However, if they were a young married immigrant couple and had this one child, a first child who was healthy, it's my feeling that in their culture, unless they were both without family themselves, very likely by returning to Europe with the baby, they could have had family support there. The steamship ticket back to Europe cost some money, even for steerage/3rd class and I don't think there was an extra charge for an infant. But OK, they thought giving the baby up was the only thing to do.
Ah well, we know it is all speculation. Speculation as well as understanding what was happening in the time and place that all these things happened can sometimes get us to where we want to go with research.
Now, this is where the paper trail genealogy for the family that adopted Monica's mother is also important. Based on Monica's testimony about where her mother was raised, where her mother went to live after both of these adoptive parents died, we did some research.
(Note added February 16th. Please read this carefully. The following is about Monica's mother who is in her 80's and wants to know who her people are and what we learned about the people who adopted her...)
We learned that her mother's adoptive parents died, one after another and not long after she turned 18, something Monica did not know and had not been told. Certainly her mother knew that. Where her (adoptive) mother took Monica to live after she was alone in raising her, connected to her (adoptive) mother's side of the family. Yet Monica had never met any relatives! Whatever happened, her mother did not keep or have these connections for long enough for Monica to connect with them. Perhaps they too heard some stories?
I discovered the adoptive family had relatives in other states but not that the adoptive parents ever lived or worked in Chicago during the census periods. Based on the adoptive father's profession on the census, I could imagine he could have gotten work there, maybe even gone to school there, and then moved home. How is it that a woman from Pennsylvania married a man from Kansas? Knowing where the adoptive couple met and where they married, what church perhaps, would allow for some questioning and clues. It appears that the adoptive parents started out life in two different states and went to live closer to the father's side.
The very large city of Chicago was very likely a hub for parents who wanted to surrender their new born baby for adoption though they came from elsewhere or were just passing through. It could be traveled to from many parts of the country due to outstanding train services. Couples who wanted to adopt from all over could go to Chicago to find a baby. For a mother or parents who wanted a baby to get a good home, or who wanted to not be local to the adoption, a big city might be the answer. But Chicago was certainly not the only place a baby up for adoption could be found in the 1930's. Finding an original birth certificate for Monica's mother issued in Chicago, Cook County, or in Illinois is the logical step.
The first stop for religious people to adopt a child was often an agency or organization run by the very church they were members of. That's why I want to know if the couple married in a Church, what religion. It might lead me to a care home for babies or an orphanage. This adoption through a Church run place was once considered very important. Still is to some people. So Catholics might go to a Catholic orphanage. But if you were not religious, not affiliated with any church, then you would likely go to a county or other agency. A couple could also do a private adoption in which a doctor or lawyer might find you a child, usually one of their patients or clients who presented that possibility.
By doing the paper trail genealogy, the traditional way, we were able to find some interesting truths about Monica's mother's life that she had not mentioned. Monica's mother never said that her adoptive parents both died or why or how and so soon after she turned 18. Death certificates could be compelling. Monica's mother never mentioned an early marriage not long after she turned 18. Or a divorce. She has only admitted to two marriages and two divorces. However, it appears that, after her parent's death, relatives on both her adoptive mother's side and adoptive father's side must have been concerned for her and that she might have lived with them a while before that first marriage, based on locality. Perhaps, as was the case again with Marilyn Monroe, this early marriage might have been considered the best case scenario for her, an arrangement that proved to be based on desperation.
Everyone is entitled to their privacy, their secrets. Monica's mother might have deep emotions she felt best to bury when raising Monica. However, that she kept some of these secrets does make me wonder about the information she's provided in hopes of finding her heritage.
I advised Monica that there are different DNA tests for different purposes and the one her mother took a few years ago was only for ethnicity. I urged her to continue with the other options such as putting herself and her mother on adoption registries and to continue her Chicago based research, as some new options have opened up in Illinois.
Note: In order to keep the privacy of the individuals in this genealogy case which is presented here for educational purposes, some changes have been made.
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You can bring up my adoption posts here at Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot by clicking on the label 'Adoption" or for the series Adoption Strategies - AWG.
